Tales from our Tasmanian smallholding in the foothills alongside Wellington Park. We moved here in 2004 from the UK and lived through four winters in a damp caravan whilst building our house, bringing up our young son and developing our unruly plot.

Visit my Etsy Shop!

28 May 2017

Next series of photos: Alum Cliffs walk from Kingston Beach to Taroona. Turns out that no-one wanted to walk all the way there and then back again. So poor old Mum got sent back to fetch the car and meet them at the Taroona Shot Tower tea-rooms. Turns out we were almost at the end, so I ended up doing most of the walk twice and when I got to Taroona they'd already eaten cake and were ready to go home!

This sums up the state of the debate regarding the change of Australia Day. Currently, Australia Day -a day in which we are meant to celebrate all things Australian (smacks of nationalism to me) - is on the daythat the Brits landed to set up a colony. Clearly the Aborigines feel this should be called 'Invasion Day' andI'm inclined to agree.

One of my autumnal flower arrangements.

Below: last vestiges of autumn colour on Tupelo, Maple and Silver Birch.

Cherry tree leaves.

I was given a batch of duck eggs that had been abandoned by the Mum for some unknownreason. The few babies that hatched were very weak and all died within a few days. This was the last -it was such a shame.

Two last huge turkeys.

A huge blackwood branch came down on Mitchells Road, from an almost dead treeon our boundary, close to our gate. I tried to handle the resulting chaos but me and chainsawweren't up to the challenge, so I had to call in help from the Council, who arrived promptlyand sawed it all up. We've since carted the lot back to the tractor shed to dry for firewood.

Me, Luke and Baz, one of our new kittens. Luke and I had just had a short sharp haircutcourtesy of me and my scissors.We lost our darling Murphy-Cat and adopted these three littlerascals to help with our recovery!

Little Baz snoozing.

Cardboard cat box (interlinked) mark 1

Above and below: the three new kittens: Baz, Scorch and Ed.

Ed chilling on my shoulder.

Very proud of myself. I managed to replace all of the lights on the stairs that had gone -around 6 in total. I removed lights from the series in the downstairs corridor and used themto replace the stair ones. I have still got to sort the ones downstairs however - currentlyjust holes with wire poking out that the cats are fascinated with.

Guava and blackberry being filtered to make jelly. I made many pots of this deliciousspread.

Blackberry liqueur on soak. I added a tea-bag to give it a bit of a tannin flavour.

Carrots grown in my veggie bed and pulled by Luke. The tops will be fedto the rabbits.

Sugar-snap peas grown by Luke on the deck upstairs. We had a massivehaul of these, most of which Luke ate raw before I could use them in any recipe.

Bluey and babies.

Above and below: Last handsome bunny to be sold.

Weird silvery little babies - born to white Mum and black Dad.

Just before we sold the second of our plots of land, following our boundary change, Iretrieved 2 gates which were forming part of the boundary fence and fixed up the fence. Iplan to use them in my new goat paddock.

Above and below: second veggie bed under construction. I put heaps of compost,old hay, branches etc down first, then covered it in top soil, well-rotted hay and manure,and finally weed mat.